Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning
Fall 2004, pp. 5-13
Jane Addams and the Origins of Service-Learning
Practice in the United States
Gary Daynes
Brigham Young University
Nicholas V. Longo
University of Minnesota
This article uses primary and secondary research on educational, social, and political theory in the late
19th and early 20th centuries to argue that the history of service-learning must be revised to include Jane
Addams’ pioneering work. A full consideration of Addams significantly revises understanding the origins
of service-learning, suggesting service-learning has its origins as a practice, not a theory; in the community, not the university; and among women, not men. Further, Addams’ work counterbalances the contemporary effort to justify service-learning largely on its scientifically verifiable outcomes.
“The settlement is a protest against a restricted
view of education.”
—Jane Addams
In a 1904 essay titled “The Humanizing
Tendency of Industrial Education,” Jane Addams
asked her readers to imagine what public schools
would look like if they followed the educational
practices of Hull House, the social settlement that
Addams had formed with Ellen Gates Starr 15
years before. “We could imagine the business man
teaching the immigrant his much needed English
and arithmetic,” she wrote, “and receiving in return
lessons in the handling of tools and materials so
that they should assume in his mind a totally different significance from that [which] the factory
gives them.” In the same place, Addams argued,
one should see Italian women learning English in
the kitchen while they teach their instructors “how
to cook the delicious macaroni, such a different
thing from the semi-elastic product which
Americans honor with that name” (Addams,
1904/1994, p. 120).
Had Addams written “The Humanizing
Tendency” in 1994 one would see in her remarks a
creative but typical description of service-learning.
But the date of her writing, 1904, and the location
of the service-learning, Hull House, suggests that
Addams’ work was much more than a standard
application of service-learning practice. It was,
instead, pioneering work, the understanding of
which should reframe thinking about the history
and significance of service-learning.
Though the service-learning movement has paid
more attention to its history than most movements
for educational reform, the history it has crafted
has taken an unusual form. It has focused overwhelmingly on John Dewey as the intellectual forefather of the movement (Giles, 1991; Giles &
Eyler, 1994; Saltmarsh, 1996). In this, the history
of a movement about community-campus partnerships for action has been written largely as a history of ideas emerging from a university. Of course,
John Dewey’s work is enormously rich and his role
in creating a system of education responsive to
community interests should not be minimized.
Nonetheless, if the movement is to learn from its
origins, it needs to take a fuller look at them.
There have been attempts to expand the early
history of service-learning, including efforts to
include Jane Addams among the early pioneers of
community service in American culture (along
with Dewey and Dorothy Day) from Keith Morton
and John Saltmarsh (1997). Ira Harkavy and John
Puckett (1994) use Hull House as a model for contemporary urban universities, especially the partnerships at University of Pennsylvania. Jane
Addams School for Democracy uses the legacy of
Hull House to inspire a long-term community-university partnership between the University of
Minnesota and the West Side neighborhood of St.
Paul, Minnesota (Longo & Wallace, 2000; Wallace,
2000). In addition, Charles Stevens (2003) has
done pioneering work on the African-American
origins of service-learning (Stevens, 2003). This
article builds upon this work and proposes that Jane
Addams’ work and writing are essential to such a
re-examination of service-learning’s history.
Addams allows us a glimpse into the origins of service-learning as a practice, as opposed to a theory.
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Daynes and Longo
A history of service-learning that takes account of
Addams also locates the origins of service-learning
not in the university, but in the community, with
institutions (including institutions of higher education) playing an important supporting role. And it
places the origins of service-learning squarely in
the movement for the expansion of the role of
women in public life. These three expansions of
service-learning’s history alone should make
Addams of interest to contemporary practitioners.
But in addition to adding gender, practice, and partnership to service-learning’s history, Jane Addams’
work is a valuable reminder that service-learning
may be understood not only as an educational technique, but also as an agile approach to learning
whose greatest value is the unpredictable creativity
that it brings to public life.
Gender and the Origins of Service-Learning
Jane Addams was born in 1860 and came of age
during a time of social, political, and intellectual
upheaval. The assumptions that undergirded preCivil War America—that there ought to be rough
economic equality between citizens, that agriculture was central to American economic life, and
that women were principally responsible for raising and training their children—were all shaken
after the Civil War. Industrialization opened huge
gaps between the rich and poor even while it drew
rural and immigrant families to America’s burgeoning cities. Once there, women found that the
possibility of factory work dismantled traditional
assumptions about their proper work. Factories
often recruited female workers, who could be paid
lower salaries than their male colleagues. In turn,
many women found factory work essential for their
family’s economic well-being.
In the industrial cities of the American North,
then, women found their roles in flux. On one
hand, traditional social and family expectations
were weakening. But on the other hand, political
and intellectual stereotypes of women held fast.
Women were forbidden to vote, a move justified in
part by the intellectual position that men were, by
nature, public beings, while women were naturally
more concerned with the private, domestic sphere.
The divergence between social roles and political
expectations of women was most obvious in education. More girls attended school, more women
became teachers, and more women entered college.
But for college educated women in the late 19th
century, schooling was a mixed blessing. They
were certainly pleased to have access to college,
but a college education in a nation unprepared to
open the public realm to women left them primed
for public work that they were not permitted to do
(Addams, 1893/2002; Addams, 1898/1994;
Whipps, 2000).
Jane Addams was among this generation of col6
lege educated women. She attended Rockford
Female Seminary, which was in the process of transitioning from a finishing school to liberal arts college when Addams was there. When Addams graduated from Rockford she went to medical school,
and then, after a prolonged illness, to Europe. Her
travels marked a period of deep dissatisfaction,
both because they followed on the death of her
father and because they highlighted the gap
between her training and the possibilities available
to her as a middle-class woman with a higher education (Lagemann, 1994).
Like many of her cohorts, Addams eventually
rebelled against the separation of women from the
public sphere. She did this by asserting that in
industrial society, the domestic, private work of
women was inevitably public, and the public
sphere inevitably influenced the quality of family
life. No matter how spotless the home, urban
women could not keep their children well if sewage
ran in the streets; women forced by poverty to work
in factories could never guarantee the virtuous
upbringing of their children. Addams’ urge to connect the public and private, domestic and political,
is at the center of her work and thought (Elshtain,
2000). It led Addams (1899/2002) to argue that
charity, by making service to others a private affair,
was insufficient to the challenges that the community faced. It drove her to found Hull House, a
place that was at once a home and a political center. And it determined the process by which she
carried out her work. Addams constantly measured
her practice against both the stories of individual
women and the most significant political and educational trends of her time (Seigfried, 2002). It was
through this reflective practice (Schon, 1983) that
Addams and her colleagues developed the programs and ideas that form the core of today’s service-learning practice.
Practice, Culture, and Reflection
When Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House in Chicago in 1889, they saw its
work to be largely about providing cultural uplift to
the immigrant families who lived in the surrounding neighborhoods. To this end they began, among
other things, an art lending program, wherein Hull
House loaned copies of paintings by European
masters to families for display in their tenements.
Addams was originally quite pleased with the lending program, bringing, as it did, some beauty to rundown homes. Upon reflection, though, Addams and
Starr decided that uplift alone was not sufficient. Uplift
imagined that immigrants carried no culture with
them, an assumption that became immediately false
once Hull House’s workers spent much time with their
neighbors. Hull House quickly revised the way it made
decisions about programming, rejecting a top-down
model for a collaborative one. Addams noted in 1895
that, “All the details were left for the demands of the
neighborhood to determine, and each department has
Jane Addams and the Origins of Service-Learning Practice
grown from a discovery made through natural and reciprocal relations” (Quoted in Lagemann, 1994, p. 23).
Uplift also included false assumptions about the people providing the charity. By defining them as culturally outside the community, it erected unnecessary
barriers between service-providers and recipients.
Addams (1899/2002) put it this way,
We find in ourselves the longing for a wider
union than that of family or class...but we fail to
realize that all men are hoping; and are part of
the same movement of which we are a part.
Many of the difficulties in philanthropy come
from an unconscious division of the world into
the philanthropists and those to be helped. It is
an assumption of two classes, and against this
class assumption our democratic training revolts
as soon as we begin to act upon it. (p. 62)
Finally, uplift privatized the effort to improve human
life. A copy of a Rembrandt hanging in one apartment uplifted only those few people who entered the
apartment; a public lecture on Rembrandt could
reach hundreds.
Hull House maintained its art lending program.
But as Addams, Hull House workers, and their
neighbors worked to improve the whole community, they added to the lending program a huge list of
other cultural events lectures, plays, concerts, and
museum exhibits. These additional cultural activities made Hull House one of the preeminent cultural centers in Chicago. Of course, Hull House’s
work was not limited to hosting cultural events. On
the contrary, it was involved in service, politics,
and research over many years. Hull House created
the first public playground in Chicago, the first
kindergarten, citizenship classes, English classes,
and Labor Museum. Hull House residents and
neighbors fought for clean streets, child labor laws,
and campaigned against corrupt politicians. And
the women of Hull House worked with the
University of Chicago to conduct the first sociological investigation of a neighborhood with Hull
House Maps and Papers in 1895, which is also pioneering work in the area of community asset-mapping (McKnight, 1995).
All of these activities, by their natures, aimed to
do good. But Addams also understood them as a
way for participants to have the experience of
working with people unlike themselves (Seigfried,
1999). This storehouse of experiences, and the stories that resulted from them, were, in Addams’
eyes, the social basis of democracy. They reminded
individuals, whoever they were, that the stories of
their individual lives were valuable, and they
reminded those same people that their lives were
not full without real experience engaging in the
lives of others.
Partnership: Education in the Community
Addams’ belief, that personal experience formed
the basis of democracy, was not confined to Hull
House’s cultural and social activities. It extended
also into Hull House’s educational work. Addams
was always intensely interested in education, and
in the 1890s and 1900s served on several formal
and informal city-wide education commissions
(Whipps, 2000).
Addams argued that education, like service, needed to be seen broadly, relationally, and publicly. She
deliberately chose a community-based institution,
outside the university, to be the hub for these efforts.
In part, this decision came because Hull House provided enormous flexibility for educators. It sponsored all sorts of learning—a kindergarten for immigrant children, music school, drama training, citizenship courses, courses on social science and cooking,
and general adult education courses.
Addams’ choice of Hull House for her educational activities also grew out of a critique of higher education, not unlike that offered by servicelearning practitioners. This is not to say that
Addams despised higher education. She lectured
regularly at the University of Chicago and the
University of Wisconsin, and welcomed faculty
and students from local schools to join with Hull
House in carrying out research on poverty, working
conditions, and health issues in Chicago. But
Addams resisted all attempts to get her to join any
university and remained at Hull House for her
entire life (Davis, 1973).
Addams’ unwillingness to join a university grew
out of her understanding of the unique role that settlements could play in the creation of knowledge.
Addams (1899/1994) wrote,
As the college changed from teaching theology to teaching secular knowledge the test of its
success should have shifted from the power to
save men’s souls to the power to adjust them in
healthful relations to nature and their fellow
men. But the college failed to do this, and
made the test of its success the mere collecting
and disseminating of knowledge, elevating the
means into an end and falling in love with its
own achievement. (p. 90)
Addams argued that the settlement, on the other
hand, stands for “application as opposed to research;
for emotion as opposed to abstraction; for universal
interest as opposed to specialization” (p. 78). For
Addams, who believed so strongly in the significance of personal experience, any institution that
gave itself over to research, abstraction, and specialization was an institution that failed to support
democracy. She worried that the university would
“swallow the settlement and turn it into one more
laboratory: another place in which to analyze and
depict, to observe and record” (p. 88).
Hull House provided a learning model outside
the school for children and adults that crossed the
lines of race, class, language, and educational
achievement. Addams (1902/2002) wrote, “If we
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Daynes and Longo
admit that in education it is necessary to begin with
the experiences which the child already has and to
use his spontaneous and social activity, then the
city streets begin this education for him in a more
natural way than does the school” (p. 83).
Hull House’s reputation as a center for social
work has led many to overlook its role as an educational institution. Part of that role consisted of
offering classes. But an equally important part consisted of acting as a mediating institution or community connector. Hull House connected the community to schools, colleges, and universities.
Addams often described this work as bringing into
the circle of knowledge and fuller life, men and
women who might otherwise be left outside. She
(1892/1965) wrote:
Perhaps the chief value of a Settlement to its
neighborhood, certainly to the newly arrived
foreigner, is its office as an information and
interpretation bureau. It sometimes seems as if
the business of the settlement were that of a
commission merchant. Without endowment
and without capital itself, it constantly acts
between the various institutions of the city and
the people for whose benefit these institutions
were erected. The hospitals, the country agencies, and State asylums are often but vague
rumors to people who need them most. This
commission work, as I take it, is of value not
only to the recipient, but to the institutions
themselves. (p. 54)
The relational “commission work” of the settlement house led residents to connect with local politics, lead reforms in city hall, work with public
schools and universities, and connect immigrant
residents to other much-needed community institutions. Settlement workers recognized the need to
“be local” (Smith, 1994) and aware of neighborhood needs and assets. Addams claimed that their
settlement house residents’ unique role in the
neighborhood allowed them to see institutions
from the perspective or lived-realities of ordinary
neighborhood residents.
Partnership with her fellow community members
took on a deep meaning for Addams. She learned
early on that outsiders often made assumptions about
Hull House’s neighbors, referred to as “those people.” While Addams might refute those assumptions
by herself, she preferred giving “those people” an
opportunity to speak for themselves. Thus, Addams
(1906) never addressed a Chicago audience about the
settlement and surrounding community without
inviting a neighbor to go along so that she “might
curb any hasty generalization by the consciousness
that I had an auditor who knew the conditions more
intimately than I could hope to do” (p. 14).
Hull House’s model of education, based in the
students’ experiences and own voices, was perhaps
best evident in the Hull House Labor Museum. The
Labor Museum employed aged women to practice
8
the skills they had developed as young people in
their homelands. By so doing it recognized and celebrated the talents and crafts of immigrants in the
neighborhood surrounding Hull House. It was a
revolutionary idea that attempted to create an alternative to the alienating labor forced upon new
immigrants in the United States. It also provides a
model of how to structure intergenerational programs that help children see their immigrant parents’ contributions and talents. Addams often told a
story to this end: “Angelina Discovering Her
Mother’s Talents—and Her Own Heritage.”
Addams wrote:
I recall a certain Italian girl who came every
Saturday evening to a cooking class in the
same building in which her mother spun in the
Labor Museum exhibit; and yet Angela always
left her mother at the front door because she
did not wish to be too closely identified in the
eyes of the rest of the cooking class with an
Italian woman who wore a kerchief over her
head, uncouth boots, and short petticoats. One
evening, however, Angelina saw her mother
surrounded by a group of visitors [teachers]
from the School of Education [of the
University of Chicago], who much admired the
spinning, and she concluded from their conversation that her mother was “the best stickspindle spinner in America.” When she
inquired from me as to the truth of this deduction, I took occasion to describe the Italian village in which her mother had lived, something
of her free life, and how, because of the opportunity she and the other women of the village
had to drop their spindles over the edge of a
precipice, they had developed a skill in spinning beyond that of the neighboring towns...
It was easy to see that the thought of her
mother with any other background than that of
the tenement was new to Angelina and at least
two things resulted; she allowed her mother to
pull out of the big box under the bed the beautiful homespun garments which had been previously hidden away as uncouth; and she openly came into the Labor Museum by the same
door as did her mother, proud at least of the
mastery of the craft which had been so much
admired. (Elshtain, 2000, p. 145)
We can imagine that Angela’s experience was quite
normal for people coming to the Labor Museum; like
Hull House itself, the Labor Museum brought people
who were not able to fully participate in democracyimmigrants, poor people, young people, women, and
even academics-and widened the circle of enlightenment by “freeing the power” within and connecting
them to public life (Addams, 1902/2002).
Addams and Dewey
One of the people who Addams helped bring into
Jane Addams and the Origins of Service-Learning Practice
that circle was John Dewey, who is often seen as
the founding figure of service-learning. Addams’
educational practices had a profound impact on
Dewey, who visited Hull House in 1891, before he
joined the faculty at the University of Chicago.
This was early in the days of Hull House, and the
young Dewey, then 32 (Addams was 31), came
away impressed. After that visit, Dewey (1892)
wrote to Addams,
I cannot tell you how much good I got from the
stay at Hull House. My indebtedness to you for
giving me an insight into matters there is great.
. . .Every day I stayed there only added to my
conviction that you had taken the right way.
(personal communication, January 27)
Dewey concluded by predicting that other community institutions would apply the experiential educational approach being used by Hull House. “I am
confident that 25 years from now the forces now
turned in upon themselves in various church and
c[ommunity] agencies will be finding outlet very
largely just such channels as you have opened.” This
cemented a life-long friendship and reciprocal partnership. Dewey became a regular visitor, lectured at
Hull House’s Plato Club, and to the University extension classes taught there. He also became a member
of Hull House’s original Board of Trustees in 1897
and later named his daughter after Addams.
In some ways it would be counterproductive to
claim that Addams was more important than
Dewey, or that her work preceded his. They saw
themselves as part of the same circle, working on
the same problems from different angles.
Christopher Lasch (1965), Addams’ first posthumous academic champion, wrote that “It is difficult
to say whether Dewey influenced Jane Addams or
Jane Addams influenced Dewey. They influenced
each other and generously acknowledged their
mutual obligations” (p.176). Nonetheless, it is
worth pointing out that two of Dewey’s major
works of educational philosophy, “The School as
Social Centre” (1902/1976) and Democracy and
Education (1916), were heavily influenced by his
experience at Hull House. In his most direct attribution to Hull House as a model for educational
practice in “The School as a Social Settlement,”
Dewey (Dewey & Dewey, 1915/2003) wrote,
“Closer contact with neighborhood conditions not
only enriches school work and strengthens motive
force in the pupils, but it increases the service rendered to the community” (p. 205-206). The
philosopher Charlene Haddock Seigfried (1999)
tellingly notes that Dewey’s ideal community, a
“mode of associated living, or conjoint communicated experience” (p. 213), was first made real at
Hull House before he put its essence on the page.
Applications
Hull House went on to become the most famous
settlement house of its time. Addams became a
national spokesperson for this movement, and,
based on that renown, an international activist for
peace. The settlement idea spread rapidly. In 1891,
two years after the founding of Hull House, there
were 6 settlements in the United States; by 1897
there were 74. The number quickly jumped to 100
in 1900, doubled to 200 in 1905, and doubled again
to more than 400 by 1910 (Davis, 1973).
Settlements addressed serious societal issues at the
turn of the century, including rapid industrialization, urbanization, a large increase of non-English
speaking immigrants from Europe, poverty, child
labor, sickness, and political corruption. They created the opportunity for upper-class women to see
for themselves the “objective” issues in lowincome immigrant communities. Settlements also
gave a practical outlet for addressing the “subjective” need for young, idealistic women to work for
social change. They built rich partnerships between
communities, activists, and academics.
The partnership between Addams and Dewey
was but one such relationship that emerged
between women who ran settlement houses and
(mostly male) university faculty members. If the
authors are correct in asserting that these partnerships were one of the origins of service-learning
practice, then it follows that service-learning
researchers need to pay close attention to servicelearning’s gendered origins. Gender is particularly
important for understanding Addams’ views on
democracy. Addams and her cohorts in the settlement house movement were among the first generation of college-educated women in the United
States. They understood their educations as placing
upon them the obligation of improving the public
sphere. But in a system where women were not
enfranchised with the right to vote, their influence
on the formal aspects of democracy was blunted.
In response, Addams developed an understanding of the public sphere significantly different from
that emerging from America’s universities.
Progressive-era academics increasingly described
education, society, and democracy in a formal way,
as scientific systems: predictable, classifiable,
understandable through experimental study, and
best led by experts. Addams rejected this notion
entirely. Instead, she understood education, society,
and democracy as creative systems: unpredictable,
understandable through experience and reflection,
and open to leaders of all sorts. This is what
Addams (1910/1998) meant when she described
the settlement as a “protest against a restricted view
of education” (p. 175).
Tensions between scientific and creative understandings of education, society, and democracy
continue to the present in the service-learning
movement. While much of the movement’s rhetoric
mirrors Addams’ views, much of its work is closer
to her adversaries in the universities. Service-learning researchers increasingly seek quasi-scientific
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Daynes and Longo
ways to assess service-learning, while practitioners
look for techniques that will produce predictable
outcomes. The authors understand the appeal and
contribution of scientific conceptions of education.
But we suggest that examining Jane Addams’ role
in the origins of service-learning leads to several
lessons that can only be learned through conceiving
of service-learning as creative and relational, not
formal and scientific.
Addams is more than an important historical figure in shaping service-learning practice; revisiting
the work of Hull House can help address some of
the most difficult issues for service-learning work:
the problem of time, space and place, service vs.
activism, and the apolitical and disempowering
tendencies in the practice and language of service.
Because Addams comes at each of these issues
from the community, rather than the university perspective, she is able to see the issues differently.
Addams’ example can provide much guidance to
contemporary service-learning practice.
The “Problem” of Time
University education is built upon numerous artificial constructions of time. Students take classes in
credit hours, courses are offered in terms, students
take final examinations and graduate after amassing enough hours over enough terms at the university. These ways of thinking about time grow out of
a scientific conception of learning. John Tagg
(2003) suggests that common conceptions of time
in higher education result in a limited “time horizon,” that is, students and teachers think they will
have to live with the consequences of their actions
at school for only a brief time.
University-based conceptions of time and students’ limited time horizon have long been problems
in service-learning. They manifest themselves in
questions about how many hours of service-learning
are sufficient, and in efforts to assess the outcomes of
service based on the number of hours volunteered.
University-based time constraints also show themselves in the difficult work of establishing a longterm partnership when students will be cycling
through short-term service assignments at partner
organizations on a regular basis (Wallace, 2000).
Responses to the problem of time often take two
paths: to encourage students (often through incentives such as pay or university credit) to continue to
serve once a particular course is over, and to create
partnerships that can endure after they leave. Both
of these approaches work within the university’s
model of time. Addams’ work suggests a third,
complementary approach, one that uses a different
model of time. Her model is at once attuned to very
brief and very long periods of time. For Addams,
important insights came from events—brief
moments that exemplified significant facts.
Addams used these events as the basis for narratives, such as “Angelina Discovering Her Mother’s
Talents,” related above, or the “Devil Baby” at the
10
core of The Long Road of Woman’s Memory
(1916/2002). These event narratives in turn were
the basis for programs, which changed regularly,
and conceptions of society, which, for Addams,
were quite stable. Service-learning could profit
from Addams attention to brief events and their
long-term implications.
Events were central to the way Addams learned,
but her own endurance at Hull House was central to
its success. Once she was completely committed to
Hull House in 1889, she lived there until her death
in 1935. Hull House’s success depended on her
endurance there; the partnerships Hull House built
relied both on good structure and the long-term
commitment of core staff to those partnerships.
Today, where service-learning offices are often
grant-funded, nonprofits face tenuous existences,
and staff turnover is high, Addams’ example is a
reminder of how important long-term personal
commitments are to the work in a particular place.
The “Problems” of Place and Space
Service-learning is increasingly program-driven.
That is, funders, universities, nonprofits, and their
staffs work to create programs that effectively
respond to problems. Though in their application,
programs can be localized, in their conception they
tend to be generalized—sets of practices or principles that can, in theory, be applied anywhere.
Addams’ work was not program-driven. Certainly
she and her coworkers organized many programs,
as discussed in this article. But these programs
emerged from a particular place, Chicago. And the
programs emerged from a particular space, the
open, welcoming, experimental, permanent location of Hull House. Hull House could hold all sorts
of activities, and teach all sorts of classes. It could
withstand changes in staff and program. Its permanence held practical and symbolic importance in
the community. People came to Hull House when
their own homes burned down; organizations looking to be born found shelter there. If Hull House is
an example today, it is of how important a physical
space can be for collaboration and service, especially in pursuit of civic education.
The “Problem” of Activism vs. Service
One of the fiercest debates during the past two
decades in service-learning has been the question of
whether educators should encourage and support charitable service or political activism (sometimes referred
to as social change) among students. Many argue that
direct service is an important place to start, but not
enough in itself: service must lead across a hierarchical continuum to political activism. The Corporation
for National and Community Service, on the other
hand, has made this continuum difficult to pursue by
notably excluding political activism from an acceptable activity that can be supported with its funds.
Morton (1995) argues that charitable service and political activism are both important pieces, but what mat-
Jane Addams and the Origins of Service-Learning Practice
ters most is the integrity and movement toward depth
in either approach.
Hull House also made it possible for Addams to
bridge the divide between service and activism.
Being anchored in a neighborhood made face-toface service possible. Moreover, as a civic space
and a mediating institution, Hull House was a constant reminder that service was inseparable from
political action.
While Addams (1899/2002) was an outspoken
critic of charitable service even in the work at Hull
House, service vs. activism was a non-issue there
precisely because of the long-term commitment to
democratic practice. Hull House was involved in
direct charity addressing the needs of neighborhood individuals (English classes, day care, food)
and involved in political activism (protesting child
labor, hosting organized labor, campaigning
against corrupt politicians). It was never an “eitheror” choice, partly because decisions were not made
on university calendars, grant cycles, or funders’
interests. Hull House was committed to addressing
neighborhood problems, whether they were essential needs or structural reform. In terms of a longterm commitment, all issues were seen in a larger
democratic context of public problem-solving.
Addams often said that Hull House was about creating a vibrant democracy, with a diverse group of
people contributing their talents to the common lot.
As she states in Democracy and Social Ethics, “this
is the penalty of democracy: that we are bound to
move retrograde or forward together. None of us
can stand aside” (1902/2002, p. 112).
The “Problem” of Service
Some of the harshest criticisms of service-learning
have come from public intellectuals who, like
Addams, approach campus-community partnerships
with a community perspective and political orientation. Harry Boyte, (forthcoming, 2004) codirector of
the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the
University of Minnesota, for instance, contends that
service-learning routinely “neglects to teach about
root causes and power relationships, fails to stress
productive impact, ignores politics, and downplays
the strengths and talents of those being served” (p.
12). Moreover, the paradigmatic stance of service,
Boyte argues, is the “outside expert.” Likewise, John
McKnight (1995) of the Asset-Based Community
Development Institute at Northwestern University,
critiques the professional nature of service provision
which views people in communities for their deficiencies, rather than their assets.
Addams (1899/2002), who worried about the
“problems of a charitable orientation,” would certainly be sympathetic to these criticisms. Addams
was a generalist, and a critic of the trend towards professionalization that progressives bequeathed to
higher education in the early 20th century (Lasch,
1995). Addams was also suspicious of expert-driven
solutions; for instance, Addams was more critical of
middle class progressive reformers than corrupt ward
bosses she fought all of her life, because the ward
bosses were at least democratic in method, not leaving government to the “experts.” And, unlike the
reformers, the corrupt politicians were “engaged in the
great moral effort of getting the mass to express itself,
and of adding this mass energy and wisdom to the
community as a whole” (Addams, 1902/2002, p. 118).
Hull House allowed ordinary people to contribute their talents and skills to the common lot, as
is evident in the Labor Museum, which celebrated,
honored, and utilized immigrants’ skills. Addams’
philosophy did not view service-learning as a program to deliver services to the less fortunate; service-learning, Addams believed, was the obligation
of citizenship being co-created by those with mutual interests. Addams took this lesson from her early
visit to Toynbee Hall in London. Canon Barnett,
who founded the first settlement house, described
the distinguishing feature of Toynbee Hall and the
settlement movement as, “the absence of program
and the presence of men and women who recognize the obligations of citizenship” (Barnett &
Barnett, 1909, p. 286).
Again, it is important to see the response to these
critics in the creative and relational elements of the
work at Hull House. Just after starting Hull House
in 1892, Addams (1893/2002) said:
The one thing to be dreaded in the Settlement is
that it lose its flexibility, its power of quick adaptation, its readiness to change its methods as its
environments may demand....It must be hospitable and ready to experiment....It must be
founded on the solidarity of the human
race....[Its residents] must be content to live quietly side by side with their neighbors until they
grow into a sense of relationship and mutual
interests....In short, residents are pledged to
devote themselves to the duties of good citizenship and to arousing of the social energies which
too largely lie dormant in every neighborhood
given over to industrialism. (p. 26)
The by-products of industrialization from the
turn of the 20th century are more pervasive today
than ever, manifesting themselves in the commodification of society and spread of marketplace values in education. Moreover, the “scientific” civic
and educational assumptions born in the industrial
age remain largely in force. Addams, whose work
responded to these conditions with flexibility and
creativity, thus continues to provide good guidance
today. Her emphasis on narrative and relationship
over statistics and programs, and her ability to
make good on the promise of collaboration among
diverse people should impel others to greater agility and wisdom in service-learning work, and provide hope that service-learning can be more than a
program and contribute greatly to building a
vibrant democracy.
11
Daynes and Longo
Note
Dewey, J. (1892). Personal Communication. January 27.
Rockford, IL. Rockford College Archives.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the
2003 International Conference on Service-Learning in
Salt Lake City. We wish to thank Rick Battistoni, Dick
Cone, Dwight Giles, Abby Kiesa, Peter Levine, Kathryn
Mackay, Keith Morton, and John Saltmarsh for their
helpful comments on an earlier draft.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York:
The Macmillan Company.
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Jane Addams and the Origins of Service-Learning Practice
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Authors
GARY DAYNES is the associate director of
Freshman Academy, a learning communities initiative at Brigham Young University. He holds a Ph.D
in History from the University of Delaware, and
has taught history courses at Brigham Young
University and Western Washington University. He
has served as director of Service-Learning at
Washington Campus Compact and as the executive
director of Utah Campus Compact. He is currently
a National Campus Compact Civic Scholar.
NICHOLAS V. LONGO is a doctoral candidate
in the University of Minnesota’s School of
Education. The former national student coordinator
at Campus Compact, Nick is currently writing his
dissertation on community education and the role
of community in the civic mission of schools with
funding from the Center for Information and
Research on Civic Learning and Engagement
(CIRCLE). Nick is also co-editing two books that
will be published in winter 2005, Colleges with a
Conscience and Students as Colleagues.
13